Monday, 25 February 2013

Hitchcraft – Sling In Action

Tromped down to a spot I knew I could find some rocks and also fling said rocks with gleeful abandon and not have to worry about causing any damage.

The sling loaded, or as I prefer to call it, the “High Capacity, High Power, Military Style Assault Weapon Machine Sling!”

And after that photo, the battery in the camera died. I fired that incompetent photographer on the spot.Which
is perhaps for the best, since my performance was on the whole rather
pitiful. I mentioned yesterday that there is a very steep learning curve
to these. I thought that had to do with actually hitting a target. I
didn’t realize that it also had to do with flinging the rock in any sort
of desired direction, releasing the knot at the right time, etc. I
tried swinging it over hand, underhand and overhead. The latter,
helicopter style essentially seemed to be the one that worked best for
flinging the rock in random directions. The others were a little more
accurate. As for my hoped for speed and power and distance.....the less said the better. I think my best shot was about 25 meters. Since there was a hard crust of ice all over everything, finding decent rocks also proved tough. I did the best I could, but didn’t find much. I think I’ll go to the dollar store for some marbles and keep trying. I can see this being fun. Once I get the hang of it. I erred on the side of leaving the cord quite long, just a few inches off the ground when hanging from my hand. I may find I prefer the cord shorter, but I’ll try it for a while this long.

Here you can see a mistake I made. Opening my fingers when the knot is down there, I would have to crank them wide open in order for it to be released. What I should have done of course is use that amazing thing humans have – the opposable thumb. Clamping the knot between the thumb and index finger makes it very easy to release it at the right time. By the time my little pea-brain figured that out I had run out of usable rocks. But I know now for next time.